Hack the planet: U.S. scientists think we should artificially cool the Earth

A cautious report from the National Academy of Scientists suggests that it is now time to look into purposely re-engineering Earth’s climate in an effort to combat global warming. It’s an alarming concept, and one that was once considered to be pretty extreme—but as climate change worsens, the NAS warns that we ought to experiment on a small scale, and not for the reasons one might expect.

The theories behind hacking the Earth’s climate are surprisingly simple: the most popular concept is that of solar radiation management. SRM is a technique by which we could, in theory, minimize the sun’s impact on earth by injecting sulfur pollution high up into the air. The sulfur would mimic the behaviors of ashes from volcanic eruptions, which have already been shown to dampen the sun’s effect on Earth.

As Phys.org explained earlier this year: “A major volcanic eruption like that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 can cause worldwide cooling of about 0.1C for about two or three years.” If the effects were replicated on a larger scale, then there is the potential that we could slow global warming as we work towards reductions in carbon emissions. And to some it’s quite appealing—SRM could be done for just a few billion dollars, potentially cheaper and more efficient than working out unilateral reductions in carbon emissions.

Most reasonable scientists, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agree that SRM isn’t a particularly good idea: we don’t fully know what the long term effects would be, and have absolutely no idea if those effects would be benign. Not to mention, we do actually know how to reduce carbon emissions, and we do know that that alone would slow climate change.

The National Academy of Scientists say in their report that they want to—perhaps—test this technology outdoors on a small scale. This isn’t so as we can launch into mammoth geoengineering projects ourselves, per se, but rather so as we can better understand the science in case other nations launch their own global cooling projects.

Speaking to Phys.org, report co-author Waleed Abdalati, a University of Colorado ice scientist and former NASA chief scientist explained “There will likely come a time we’re going to want to know the ramifications of that kind of action. … You’re talking about potentially changing weather and climate. You don’t want to do that without as good an understanding as you can possibly have.”

And it’s clear that no one within the NAS is taking this discussion lightly. Panel chairwoman Marcia McNutt, editor of the journal Science—in which the report was published—and former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, underscored that the public should read this report “and say ‘This is downright scary.’ And they should say, ‘If this is our Hail Mary, what a scary, scary place we are in.'”

It’s important to note that the decision, domestically, to engage in geoengineering experiments will not be made by a group of scientists alone—a far larger discussion will be required. It’s a potentially dangerous endeavor, but one that the NAS now believes may be necessary to research if only to understand just how dangerous it may be.

2 thoughts on “Hack the planet: U.S. scientists think we should artificially cool the Earth”

We (humanity) should probably do some experiments and have some knowledge about this technique just to have an extra tool in the climate change mitigation tool box. We should probably get wise on a wide variety of techniques just in case we really need to deploy them. But engineering our home planet gives people stress (understandably). Research in these areas is kind of seen as fringe, or mad science type of stuff. Remember in 2012 when an experimenter dumped 200,000 pounds of iron sulfide powder into the ocean to see if the fertilization would result in a plankton bloom? He was vilified, called a "rogue", and the discussion was about how dangerous such unilateral actions were. All this consternation over dumping the mass of about 50 average cars into the sea, while in the same year the world emitted 50.1 Gigatonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It is a really tough dilemma. We have built up such incredible infrastructure around finding, producing, distributing, and consuming fossil fuels, that the inertia of switching over to renewable energy will take decades. Between now and the day when we get all energy from renewables, we had better become pretty savvy at dealing with the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, be it plankton blooms or geological sequestration, or sun screens.
Personally I think manipulation of the solar radiation is fraught with unintended consequences. Who controls it? How does the world agree what the best climate should be? If storms or drought wipes out the crops of one country, how is blame or compensation allocated?
And here is an important question...if it only costs a few billion dollars, then individual nations or even vested interest groups within nations have sufficient funds to start their own sulfur dispersion programs that affect the whole planet. There are nations like Bangladesh and the Maldive islands who are sinking under rising ocean levels right this minute as the rest of the world argues about what meager levels of emission cuts they will agree to. If Bangladesh chooses to not sink under the ocean and instead puts their own hands on the global thermostat, what is an appropriate response from the rest of the world? Will we send troops? Drone strikes? Nuclear weapons to dissuade this "rogue" nation from acts of self-preservation?
And one final thing...how about instead of augmenting the solar radiation, the world uses that few billion dollars to fund a Manhattan-style project to develop grid-scale electricity storage. THAT's the real game changer that will unlock the potential of renewable energy sources. If we are really serious about reducing emissions and addressing climate change then we should hasten our transition to renewables by investing in these key technologies.